"I Am Rachel Corrie" at the Arab Hebrew Theatre

The play "I am Rachel Corrie", based on Rachel's diary and letters she sent home and to friends during the period she was in the Gaza strip until she was killed there, was performed by the "Al Midan Theatre" at the Arab Hebrew Theatre in Jaffa tonight.
Rachel, an American citizen, was a peace activist serving as a human shield in order to save people's lives in the Gaza strip during the second intifade.

Rachel's parents were present at the première which took place in the framework of the Women's Festival opened today at the theatre.

In addition, "the Wild West" and "Death Song" will be presented in the framework of the festival.

Death Song

The AlSeraya theatre in Jaffa (part of the Arab Hebrew theatre) currently presents "Death Song" (in Arabic) by the Egyptian playwright Tawfik AlHakim, directed and Oleg Radovilsky.

The play tells the story of a widow, whose husband was murdered, when their son was 2 years old.
Finally the son, now grown up, returns home from his religious studies at the Islamic university.

His mother welcomes him by giving him a knife, to carry out her long planned revenge.

However, the son's religious studies have transformed him into a peace loving, deeply religious man, not interested in taking another person's life.

Beyond anger and shame, the mother gives the knife to a cousin, with tragic results.

Awaiting death

Yefet street, fairly close to the Ba'al Shem Tov junction a little slaughterhouse sprung up on the street opposite the well-known ""Hinnawi" butchery over the last few days. A Hebrew sign simply reads "Kaparot".
On the sidewalk a large truck unloads crates of chickens, packed tightly together, one on top of the other.
A queue of elderly people and some mothers with small children wait patiently on the side walk. Each of them selects a chicken and pays the young man attending the ever-growing row of people.
The shohet, (kosher butcher) murmurs a blessing while holding the struggling chicken above the head of the first person in line, who repeats the blessing.
The chicken is then turned upside down and its head sort of bent backwards, while the butcher thoroughly checks its neck feathers and then, with one quick strike of his knife, cuts through the main artery and drops the still moving chicken into a specially prepared bucket.

Cleaned of his (or her) sins, the first person in line thanks the shohet and continues with shopping, it's Yom Kippur after all, in another few days and one needs to make preparations.
The day on which we ask for forgiveness. Our sins sent away together with the chicken's life, a reminder of far away, biblical times, when there still was a temple.

In a few months it will be Id ElAdha, sheep will be slaughtered on Jaffa's streets for the same purpose more or less.
A reminder of ancient times, age old rituals, something raw and almost primitive (in the true sense of that word) , but then, i am a vegetarian.

Ariel Sharon, Sabra and Shatila Massacres Remembered

Sharon's stroke keeps the media busy, radio, newspapers, TV, all they talk about is Sharon's health.
Obviously, Israel's-elderly-priminister-just-a-few-months-before-the-elections-hospitalised-after-a-life-threatening -stroke IS news.
Will this stroke leave him capable of functioning as priminister? What about Ehud Olmert, his temporary (?) replacement?
All the media talk/write about, are the results of Sharon's latest head CT-scan, which areas of his brain have been damaged by the massive stroke suffered about 30 hours ago, Sharon's health prior to his hospitalization etc. etc.
Sharon's working too hard, his age, his family's history of health, high blood pressure and serious weight problems etc.

And ofcourse, the coming elections, the leaderless "Kadima" partry, the chances of the Likud regaining some of its former "glory".
Ha'aretz runs a story of Sharon's glorious life, images of the "bandaged hero" during the yom kippur war.
The Gaza strip pull-out orchestrated by Sharon last August: "Only Sharon could have pulled off that one". Which by the way, may well be true. He's even portrayed as a "champion of peace". Forgotten is his visit to the Temple Mount, one of the triggers of the second Intifade and its two-sided blood-trail.
Forgotten is Sharon's role in the instigation of the Lebanon war and its resulting quagmire of violence, which led to the loss of so many lives on both sides. So much blood, so many tears.

Somehow the words "Sabra and Shatila" don't come up.
Are our memories that short? September the 16th 1982 is ofcourse a while ago, but the massacre has left , so i thought, a lasting memory.
Palestinian refugees, children, women and men in the Lebanese refugee camps Sabra & Shatila were murdered by the Christian "falangists", a mission authorized by and known to Ariel Sharon. A massacre which couild have been prevented.

Ariel Sharon was forced to resign from his post as minister of defence by the Kahan commission, which investigated Israel's involvement in the massacres:

• ... draw the appropriate personal conclusions arising out of the defects revealed with regard to the manner in which he discharged the duties of his office" - in other words, that he resign; or, if necessary, that the prime minister exercise his authority to remove a minister from office.

The key paragraphs relating to Sharon's responsibility are these:

• In our view, the minister of defense made a grave mistake when he ignored the danger of acts of revenge and bloodshed by the Phalangists against the population in the refugee camps ... It is our view that responsibility is to be imputed to the minister of defense for having disregarded the danger of acts of vengeance and bloodshed by the Phalangists against the population of the refugee camps, and having failed to take this danger into account when he decided to move the Phalangists into the camps.
  
  
• In addition, responsibility is to be imputed to the minister of defense for not ordering appropriate measures for preventing or reducing the danger of massacre as a condition for the Phalangists' entry into the camps. These blunders constitute the non-fulfillment of a duty with which the defense minister was charged.

People with short memories tend to repeat their mistakes. When those people are powerful politicians, that scares me, a lot.

ariel sharon
sabra shatila

Early morning Adjami

Adjami is a little like a village, a fishermen's village, right in the middle of the city. People keep chickens, horses, donkeys and the occasional camel.

And dogs, there are lots of dogs of course.
We have an alley called, unofficially, "rotweiler avenue". No further explanation needed.

The feline species is well represented. Stray cats live mostly around the butchers and fish stores. There used to be a market, but the municipality closed it some weeks ago for doubtful reasons. Since then, no more cat food there.
And, what's worse, we are stuck without a market. But i wasn't talking about our lack of municipal services right now. Jaffa cats are thin, clever, and there is nothing nice and cuddly about them. Tough and streetwise would be a more apt description. But even the toughest of the Jaffa cats doesn't dare fool around with that other species, the Jaffa egglaying community.

So we're talking chickens, or rather cockerels or, to be more precise, the king of cockerels. The undoubted leader of the neighborhood egglaying gang. They all keep strange hours. But one of them really upsets my neighbor, an elderly patriarch, left speechless due to an operation on his vocal cords.
Said cockerel wakes the patriarch, standing below the bedroom window according to old fashioned village manners starting from about 3 A.M. , at least an hour before the muezzin's early morning prayer call.

The shutters are thrown open a few minutes after the onset of the early morning concert.
It' s pleasant and cool at this hour. The patriarch, in his striped pijamas, goes out to the balcony, where he keeps a stash of floor tiles, specifically for the purpose. (or maybe they were brought there a long time ago for a purpose no one remembers). He starts insulting the cockerel (in the quiet of the night it is actually posibble to make out some of the things he says in his voiceless raspy voice).
The cockerel, unimpressed, continues.
This is the moment when the tiles start flying into the noisy animal's direction.
I don't know if the patriarch misses him due to bad eyesight, or perhaps the-great-cockerel-god protects this particularly noisy one from any danger. Or maybe the patriarch is a really good shot and just want to stop the racket without hurting anyone.

Early morning, still cool, time for my first espresso. Another day.